Six Records For Sichel In Oslo

110 miles and 24 hours of consecutive running later William Sichel polished off his performance in Oslo with six new age-group records. Sichel was one of 156 ultra runners competing at the Bislett 24 Hour Indoor Challenge, an event that the Orkney-based athlete had hoped would assist him in achieving his goal of setting 750 running records at World, British and Scottish level.

Staged on Saturday (25 November), competitors were required to accumulate miles on a 546m indoor lap that is located underneath the famous Bislett Atheltics Stadium where the IAAF Golden League competition takes place every year.

Over the course of a full day of running, Sichel, who had competed at the same event in 2015, covered 109.9 miles – a distance that placed him 23rd from101 male starters and fourth in his age group. While Sichel set off at a blistering pace at the beginning, he believed this impacted on his performance at the latter stages: “It was all a bit strange really, but the records I broke were all in the first six hours of the race.”

Sichel continued: “I could see I was going really well early on and so decided to really push for my times at 30 miles, 50km and for total distance at 6 hours. However, by pushing so hard in those early hours I compromised my performance at the full 24 hours and was understandably not able to match my result from 2015 for total distance.”

Even though Sichel fell short of the 114 miles he covered two years ago, he was philosophical about his performance and remained happy with his achievements: “That’s just the way it went and I’m delighted with six more records.”

Next up for Sichel is a 24 hour track race in Barcelona in two weeks, an event that will be his final of 2017.